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To Bake Pike

Baked pike with optional forcemeat, seasoned with salt and cayenne, served with lemon or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Bake Pike

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Pour warm water over the fish and wipe it clean with a coarse cloth, moving from head to tail to avoid disturbing the scales.

  2. Wash the fish well in cold water, empty it, and clean the inside thoroughly.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the fish with common forcemeat or a mixture of fine salt, cayenne, and small bits of butter, then sew it up and fasten the tail to the mouth.

  2. Dredge the outside lightly with flour and dot with small bits of butter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes for moderate-sized pike, or 1 to 1.5 hours for large pike.

Serve

  1. If needed, serve with melted butter and lemon or anchovy sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pike
Forms the main body of the dish, and its flesh cooks through and flakes when baked.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the outside brown as it melts over the fish.
Flour
Lightly coats the outside, helping the skin brown and seal in moisture.
Common forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour to the fish as it bakes.

The step that matters

Baking time for the fish size. Pike is cooked through when the flesh flakes easily at the thickest part. Baking too briefly leaves the centre undercooked, while overbaking dries the flesh, so the time should match the fish's size.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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